Monday, November 22, 2010

Stealing Camp Zoe: The Federal "Forfeiture" Gang Strikes

Kids terrorized, dogs killed, a family traumatized: Welcome to Missouri.

Mike Johnston's first hint that something unusual was happening at Camp Zoe was the presence of four police officers at Tiffany Hall, the campground's dining area.

"I wondered if the police might be looking for someone's missing kid," Mike recalled to Pro Libertate. "But as I walked through the camp I saw a couple more, and then a couple more -- and then I saw a bunch of guys in SWAT fatigues with assault rifles. One of them had a German Shepherd on a leash. All of them were doing their best to look intimidating."

The armed visitors who materialized at about 7:30 a.m. on November 1 were part of a multi-jurisdictional task force that invaded Camp Zoe, a popular outdoor music venue and campground in Missouri's Shannon County. The previous evening had brought the 2010 concert season to an end with the final night of the fall "Spookstock" festival.

"Every letter of the alphabet was represented" in the raid, Mike's wife Joni wryly observes. "There were people from the DEA, the IRS, the Highway Patrol, from Homeland Security, the local police and country Sheriff's Office. There was a group from the Rolla Police Department, which is two counties away from here."

Mike and Joni were among those who had stayed overnight to help with custodial work and other housekeeping matters. Mike had slept in later than he had planned, so he may have still been a little groggy as he absorbed the shock of seeing SWAT operators prowling the grounds. While he tried to make sense of the spectacle, one of Mike's friends commented: "You haven't seen what's going on behind the bus."

In the open field behind the bus "there were three huge RVs surrounded by more than a dozen other vehicles from every local police department and several federal agencies," Mike recounted. "One of the RVs was a State Police SWAT command center, and another one was a communications center for the federal agencies. And there were dozens of cops and SWAT guys swarming everywhere."

According to multiple accounts, one camp staffer (who prefers not to be named) was briefly stopped by police on nearby Highway 19 as he was driving his children to school. He was separated from his wife and children at the point of an M-16 rifle. The detainee was taken into the camp and briefly questioned before being released.

Witnesses estimate that as many as 200 law enforcement officers took part in the assault on Camp Zoe. Given the size of that mobilization, some would expect that the police were dealing with a heavily armed gang that posed an imminent threat to public safety. Yet no criminal activity was found during the raid, and not a single person was led away in handcuffs.

This should come as a surprise only to those who persist in believing that "law enforcement" is connected in some way to the protection of life, liberty, and property. Those who invaded Camp Zoe didn't find criminal activity because they weren't looking for any. They weren't there to arrest criminals; they were preparing to steal the property in the name of "civil asset forfeiture."

"From what I saw, it looked like the people from the IRS were in charge initially," Mike Johnston relates. "The original search warrant was for business records, and I saw the IRS personnel hauling off boxes full of papers, computer drives, and other materials of that kind. Apparently they didn't find what they were looking for right away, so the DEA guys were next in line."

Camp Zoe was placed under lock-down while the raiders rummaged through every corner of the campground, intimidating staff and visitors and seizing personal items (including cash). As this was going on another federal contingent was dispatched to clean out the personal and business accounts of Jimmy Tebeau, the musician and entrepreneur who owns and operates the campground.

Camp Zoe was opened in 2004 by Tebeau, who plays bass in The Schwag, a hugely popular Grateful Dead tribute band. Since coming together in 1992, The Schwag has developed a large regional following, playing an average of roughly 140 concerts a year in addition to the "Schwagstock" festival performances. By some accounts, the 330-acre Camp Zoe is Shannon County's largest employer, and Tebeau's entrepreneurial accomplishments were recognized in a resolution enacted by the Missouri legislature in July 2005.

Counter-culture entrepreneur: Tebeau on stage.

Tebeau himself is not accused of a crime. Yet Camp Zoe has been seized and Tebeau's personal financial assets have been confiscated by a motley assortment of "law enforcement" groups.

Under the Orwellian standards governing federal "civil asset forfeiture," Tebeau's property has already been found "guilty" of involvement in a crime. The agencies that seized it will be permitted to keep and divide it among themselves unless Tebeau can prove a negative -- namely, that he did not knowingly permit the sale and use of proscribed substances by others.

Missouri state law dictates that forfeiture proceeds be given to the School Building Revolving Fund, which is administered by the state's Department of Revenue and subject to official audits. However, this isn't the case when the assets are seized as part of a joint (or "hybrid") operation with the Feds.

The Justice Department's manual on asset forfeiture describes this as "equitable sharing" of revenue proceeds, and explains that it is intended "to increase or supplement the resources of the receiving state or local law enforcement agency" and can be used by the recipient "for any permissible purpose as long as shared funds increase the entire law enforcement budget." This helps explain why practically every federal agency represented by an acronym -- as well as every local police agency -- joined the Gadarene rush to invade and occupy Camp Zoe.

If, on the other hand, the raid had been a purely local affair, it could have been "adopted" by the Feds after the fact. In congressional testimony, former deputy assistant attorney general Joe Whitley described how such an "adoption" takes place: "We receive a case which is in every aspect a local case, been worked on pretty much by the local agencies all the way from beginning to end, and we put our cover on it."

Under either approach,police agencies are typically permitted to keep at least eighty percent of the haul. The objective "is to reward the help we get from our brother and sister law enforcement" agencies, explained former Justice Department official Jerry McDowell in 2000.

Since these "rewards" are doled out in explicit and willful defiance of state forfeiture laws, what McDowell is describing is a criminal syndicate, one far larger than any of the private criminal gangs whose depredations supposedly justify the forfeiture racket. Steve Kessler, a former prosecutor and recognized expert on forfeiture laws, has described the practice of asset forfeiture as "unquestionably the largest, most lucrative business in the United States."

In many instances, Thampy reports, civil forfeitures are filed as such "until prosecutors can convince defendants to not contest the claim, at which point the forfeiture action can be re-filed as an administrative forfeiture because the property is now abandoned or unclaimed."

Furthermore, "prosecutors around the state routinely send in incomplete records that detail only a small fraction of the total forfeitures around the state," Thampy continues. Most of the recorded forfeiture proceedings "are marked `pending' in the year they are audited," and prosecutors seldom if ever revise the records to reflect whether or not the seizure was connected to an actual criminal conviction, as state law requires.

Highway robbery: Texas state police swarm a vehicle in search of loot.

As a result, literally millions of dollars harvested through asset forfeiture in Missouri are diverted from their legal use and funneled into the coffers of law enforcement agencies. The same racket is operating in practically every other state.

In northern Texas, reports the Amarillo Globe-News, officers in the State Department of Public Safety have hauled in at least $14.6 million through asset forfeiture over the past five-and-a-half years. However, "only about 6.4 percent -- or roughly $935,000 -- of those seizures have remained in the area to benefit regional law enforcement agencies and taxpayers"; the state police simply chooses "to bypass Panhandle state courts in exchange for Amarillo's federal court when the largest amounts of money are at stake."

Predictably, this"has left some I-40 district attorneys frustrated and raised concerns the federal court route gives DPS an easier and larger payday at the expense of local counties and taxpayers," observes the paper. Which is to say that the "problem" isn't the fact that the DPS is plundering people in defiance of the law, but rather that the State Police insist on Bogarting the booty.

The federal forfeiture racket has turned I-40 into huge revenue stream for police and prosecutors. That stretch of highway is just one of several coveted forfeiture corridors. The municipal government that afflicts Tenaha, a one-stoplight town located on U.S. Highway 59, has profited immensely from shakedowns carried out by local police: Any driver stopped by police for any reason can expect to be relieved of anything of value in his possession.

Should a "suspicious" amount of cash be found during the traffic stop, the motorist and any passengers will be placed under arrest for "money laundering" or drug-related charges, and given an ultimatum: Sign away the loot, or face prosecution.

This form of extortion-robbery works best when the victim is carrying an unusual but relatively small amount of cash -- say, less than $5,000 -- that wouldn't be enough to compensate for the hassle and expense of mounting a legal defense.

It is in the neighborhood of "impossible" to define a moral distinction between institutional corruption of the kind displayed by those Texas law enforcement agencies, and the variety frequently encountered on the other side of the border with Mexico.

Granted, the squabbling over lucrative forfeiture corridors hasn't degenerated (yet) into open warfare -- but bear in mind that the ongoing depression is still young, and official corruption will most likely take on a much cruder aspect as existing revenue streams evaporate.

To plunder and suppress: A Utah state trooper grabs the loot.

It's important to recognize that the civil forfeiture racket involves calculated bribery and subterfuge on the part of the Feds.

In 1990, the Missouri State Supreme Court ruled that forfeiture proceeds had to be used to fund the school system. The ink was barely dry on that ruling when Jean Paul Bradshaw, U.S. attorney for the state's Western District, wrote a letter suborning state and local police agencies to defy both the court and the state legislature by inviting the Feds to take part in forfeiture operations.

"I know all of you in law enforcement are in desperate need for additional financial resources," wrote Bradshaw. "As most of you know, the money we share through our forfeiture program goes directly to the state or local law enforcement agency."

One year earlier, a DEA agent teaching a training session on civil forfeiture for the North Carolina State Highway Patrol found little enthusiasm on the part of his audience -- until he explained that collaboration with the Feds meant that the police got to keep most of the take.

"Then everybody's eyes lit up," recalled one participant in that meeting in later congressional testimony.

In 2000, following five years of hearings on abuses of civil asset forfeiture, Congress enacted a largely useless measure to "reform" the practice. The late Henry Hyde, who at the time was chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, had proposed an amendment (sometimes called the "Missouri provision") intended to end the federal kick-back scheme. Hyde's office was immediately "swamped by faxes from law enforcement protesting the provision," reported the Kansas City Star. Janet Reno's Justice Department pressured Congress into removing the amendment, which mysteriously fell prey to a "glitch" when the measure was presented for a vote.

While an emasculated version of the forfeiture "reform" bill worked its way through Congress, the issue was a hot topic at the July, 2000 National Conference of State Legislatures in Chicago. Ballot measures demanding substantive reform of civil asset forfeiture were passed by overwhelming majorities in several states. This prompted the institutional equivalent of a smirk and a shrug from the federal "Justice" Department, which continued to play Fagin to its growing network of state and local plunderers.

The overt thuggishness displayed by some police unions during the debate over forfeiture reform a decade ago suggests a capacity for undisguised criminal violence on the part of our supposed protectors that we ignore at our peril. In its detailed series examining forfeiture, the Star pointed out that in many states "public officials shrink from angering police." Eric Sterling of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation observed that it is "dangerous" when "non-police public officials feel sufficiently threatened that they will not challenge police lawlessness."

Police unions in Utah organized a show of force perfectly suitable to late Weimar-era Germany.

"Last year when we had a hearing on forfeitures, they brought in 200 officers in uniform and just intimidated everybody," recalled Utah state representative Bill Wright in 2000. "As a matter of fact, I had two ladies who said they were scared to death. I have never been more intimidated in my life to look out there and see 200 officers in uniform with guns on their hips, staring me down."

Despite the Brownshirt-style intimidation of the state legislature and a taxpayer-subsidized propaganda campaign depicting the asset reform ballot measure as the work of a purported "drug legalization lobby," the measure was enacted with nearly seventy percent of the vote -- and immediately fell into desuetude, thanks to federal intervention.

When it examined the practice of civil asset forfeiture a decade ago, the Kansas City Star confirmed that the federal kick-back scheme was operating in at least half of the states -- that is, in every state the paper had time and assets to investigate. This corrupt arrangement has, in principle, federalized every state and local police agency involved therein: The police can seize any money or other valuable property they can find and use it fund their operations in defiance of any limits imposed on them by the population to which they should be accountable.

"A lot of state agencies, like the GBI [Georgia Bureau of Investigation], prefer to work federal cases because we know it will go directly into our asset forfeiture bank," admitted GBI official Mark Jackson. The same is true of any other state or local police agency. And this arrangement results in skewed and potentially dangerous priorities: Why should police focus on offenses against person and property, rather than on low-risk, high-yield federal forfeiture raids?

One ironic but eminently predictable result of this corrupt arrangement is the growing trend toward tardy enforcement of narcotics warrants.

"There's been a pattern of SWAT raids and other drug enforcement actions in which the police were very late in executing a narcotics-related warrant," Eapen Thampy of Americans for Forfeiture Reform pointed out to Pro Libertate. "This makes sense if the real objective

is to `forfeit' money believed to be the proceeds of a drug transaction. If the police had arrived on time, they might have prevented a sale, but then they'd be stuck with the product, rather than the proceeds. So they wait until after the deal is supposed to have gone down, then they carry out their SWAT raid and take the money instead."

This is a double-decker sandwich of official dishonesty: The police insist that SWAT teams

must be sent to serve "no-knock" drug warrants in order to prevent the destruction of evidence -- and then they wait until the evidence is gone so that they can grab the cash. The contraband ends up in the street, and the money (less the amount skimmed by the Feds) ends up in the hands of police and prosecutors.

The ongoing effort to confiscate Camp Zoe follows this formula perfectly. The paramilitary force arrived long after any alleged criminal behavior took place. Because of the involvement of multiple federal agencies, a criminal conviction isn't necessary in order for the forfeiture to be consummated. And proceeds from the sale of the property -- as well as the money stolen from Jimmy Tebeau's bank accounts -- would go directly into the coffers of state and local law enforcement, after the Feds take their cut.

According to the forfeiture complaint, both local and federal law enforcement officials spent four years building a narcotics investigation at Camp Zoe. The document claims that Tebeau both permitted and "profited" from the sale of drugs on his property. At least some of those sales allegedly involved undercover police operatives, in their familiar role of breaking the laws they're supposedly enforcing.

Under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well as the equivalent provisions in the Missouri state constitution, the criminal allegations against Tebeau must be proven in court before his property can be taken. The civil forfeiture complaint against Camp Zoe is intended to permit the police to profit from alleged criminal behavior without proving that Tebeau ever committed a crime.

Can't we all just get along?

"If they succeed in seizing Camp Zoe, we can expect the same tactics to be used against music venues nation-wide," Dan Viets told Pro Libertate. "This is a major test case that is being watched very carefully by people who hold music festivals and other large events, and who might find their property and profits subject to seizure without even being accused of a crime, let alone convicted of one."

Those seeking to steal Camp Zoe -- and their stenographers in the local press -- are betting heavily that the mainstream public won't rally to the defense of a counter-culture outpost owned by an bass-playing entrepreneur in dreadlocks.

William Jon Cox, a former prosecutor and police sergeant, points out that the current War on Drugs grew out of cynical political calculations of this kind. For reasons rooted in sheer political opportunism, the Nixon administration devised the drug war as a cultural conflict pitting the "Silent Majority" against the "Damn Dirty Hippies."

Nixon enjoyed an immediate (albeit short-lived) political benefit. The impact on the culture of law enforcement was much more dramatic and enduring: The federalization and militarization of "local" police is almost entirely an outgrowth of the War on Drugs, which now poses a potentially lethal threat to the very concept of due process and property rights. This is why everybody who claims to cherish individual liberty protected by law -- whether they are Dead-Heads or Ditto-Heads -- should support Jimmy Tebeau's effort to save Camp Zoe from the federal forfeiture gang.

(A fund has been established for those interested in helping Tebeau pay his legal bills.)

(Publisher's note: This version of the essay is updated to include a revised estimate of the number of officers who took part in the raid on Camp Zoe, and clarified with respect to other pertinent details.) Your donations help keep Pro Libertate on-line. Thanks, and God bless!

32 comments:

man. that was good. i hope people come to realize that if they do not stand up for one group, then the next time this happens, it may be them. and then they will have no one to turn to.

i think one good thing about our inevitable economic collapse is that with no revenue, many of these criminal syndicates will collapse. however, they may just wind up having washington fund them with its ever growing worthless script.

Doesn't this collaboration between all these multiple alphabet and county police agencies fall under the federal RICO statutes? Please ask Dan Viets if this case could be pleaded on that basis. (I'm not a lawyer and don't know how a RICO is defined, but that law seems to have been applied in many cases less blatant than this one.)

Mr. Grigg,Please ask Dan Viets if he has considered arguing this case in light of the Supreme Court's 2008 decision in "Ashcroft v. Iqbal". I had been reserving this weapon for use if I ever needed it myself, but this seems like a worthy cause in which to unsheath and wield it. It just might put a stop to this nationwide asset forfeiture scam. The whole practice is illegal and unconstitutional. Be interesting to see if it would end up again before the Supremes. If Dan Viets would like to discuss how that 2008 decision could possibly be used to argue this case, please ask him to email me at and send me his contact information, and I will call him back. Thanks,

The Police are vigilantes in uniform, terrorists who enforce Law as a whim, rather than a social contract with their fellow Citizens, with the backing of the Law Enforcement Corporation, which values Profit above Justice.

They need a constant supply "customers" for the private prisons. Those shareholders expect a dividend.

And that's exactly the reason I NEVER went down there. He opened up his camp in one of the hottest enforcement areas in the country. This was GOING to HAPPEN. It wasn't a question of "if", it was "when".

I love Jimmy, The Schwag, and the various members who've played with him over the years, but he should have had lawyers on this way before now.

We are witnessing the transformation of America into one massive Gaza Strip. The police are now paramilitary units trained to treat everyone as a potential terrorist. Soon we will all experience what life is like for the indigenous Semitic people of Palestine.

"law enforcement" is a joke! just last month while in St Louis a SWAT team member tried as HARD as he could to pay me for sex. what a joke! Good luck Jimmy, you've got all my energy routing for you! And the greedy, over-testosteroned, hypocritical piggies can get what they got coming to them, in this life or the next.

Sorry for the OT post but attention all you Kindle owners, lend me your ears: My liberal/progressive rock-n-roll novel, American Zen, just went up for sale on Amazon Kindle yesterday. So if you own any of the 10 varieties of Kindle, please give my novel some consideration. If you like what you read on my blog, you'll love American Zen and its take on love, life, politics, etc. There's also an option on the right side of my catalog page that enables you to see a 45 page sample and if you don't have Kindle for PC, you can d/l one for free. TIA.

Sorry JP but your post is way off topic. Might as well be some blog spammer from Hong Kong peddling the latest counterfeit Gucci bags.

On topic... I'm exhausted simply reading this latest piece of Tragi-comedy that you've posted. The outrages from the TSA crossing the pat-down rubicon have kept me all buzzed up but before you know it the unfriendly fuzz garrisoning our states are exposed, once again, for the criminals they are. I'm so sick and tired of people making excuses for being employed by these jackals. Honestly now! I've already cut off one former friend because he works with the TSA. I no longer have anything to say to him. If he, and those like him, don't grasp what part in the fascist organs they play then they'll be more than happy to ship me off for "reeducation".

If you actually believe the false-flag "terrorist" attacks are done by real "terrorists," do yourself a favor and read this eyewitness account of the "Underwear Bomber" incident which prompted and justifies these porno-scanners:

As for asset forfeiture, which is the ACTUAL topic of this post, (hey, really?!?) the essay speaks for itself. The "offending party" in these incidents, who is presumed to have committed a crime and is being "arrested," is not YOU, but your MONEY, your CAR, your HOUSE, whatever you own of value which they want to steal from you. Go figure.

YOU personally do NOT have to commit any crime at all. Their rage and fury is directed at your PROPERTY, which is PRESUMED, in the absence of any proof or reasonable suspicion whatsoever, to be guilty of participating in crime, simply because it is valuable and THEY WANT IT.

Friends, I see few comments on this essay. Does that mean nobody cares? Just wait till it happens to you. If you are so foolhardy as to drive a new red Corvette or BMW through one of these jurisdictions, they will take it from you because you don't look like you should be able to afford such a nice car.

If they want your house, they will arrange for drug deals to go down in your yard. Don't call the cops, because they will let the dealers get away, and seize your house.

If you are attending an auction and have a lot of cash in your pocket, they will take it away because the CASH, not you, is presumed to have engaged in drug crime. Guilty unti proven innocent. It will cost you a bond of $15,000 plus legal fees, just to bring an action in court to prove your property's innocence.

You think I'm kidding, don't you?

Just wait till the "economy" gets about 3 times worse than it is now, and these tax feeders are looking at losing their jobs just like all the rest of us already have. They will turn their guns and their greed on ANYONE - including you and me - who has anything worth stealing: Cash, gold coins, silver dollars, jewelry, guns, fancy cars, nicer houses than they think we should be allowed, valuable real estate, whatever. THEY WANT IT. And they will TAKE IT. At gunpoint.

What an incredibly well-written article! My congratulations on this! The forfeiture laws are un-American. This is shocking. I have had dealings with Camp Zoe and they are a responsible bunch and in no way involved in any drug-dealing. This is ludicrous.

This long post about the DEA, Jimmy Tebeau and Camp Zoe on the RFT blog really nailed the DEA to the wall on Zoe. Here is a link to RFT article:http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/atoz/2010/11/camp_zoe_site_of_schwagstock_f.php

This is really right on!

Jerry says:

"When you go to get a building permit in your county, will they issue it to you if there is something wrong? If Camp Zoe was the largest open drug air market in the Ozarks why did they continue to let it happen for 4 years??????? Collect sales tax from it? Put kids lives in danger? Does your tax dollars pay for Jimmy to train and protect us or law enforcement? From what this blogs says, these were big time drug dealers and the cops knowingly and willing let this happen for 4 years. Why did they want Jimmy to do their job? The lady who went to pull her daughter out of Camp Zoe was there what 1 hour and knew that there was drugs. How long did it take you to know drugs were being sold down there? Before you got your tent up? Have you been watching the news? Drug cartels will cut your head off if you try to stop them. Do you think Jimmy wanted to put his family at risk? Or his patrons? 4 YEARS why so long? The first drug purchase that an undercover agent made at Camp Zoe they should have made an arrest! The next permit Zoe wanted issued they should have said NO! We are sorry but we cannot issue you this permit. We have had undercover law enforcement in the crowd and something needs to be done to get a handle on the drug use! If someone smokes pot or serves a minor in a bar, they ticket the owners, if they think they were not trying to control it and give them a warning. 3 warnings and they take away their license. They do not seize the property. The State sends undercover, underage kids all the time into establishments even for cigarettes. They arrest the employee that served it on the spot and gives the place a fine. Why do people not understand and get it threw their thick head. Jimmy is NOT a Drug Enforcement Agent! Your tax dollars pays for the DEA to fight the war on drugs NOT Jimmy! If they need to shut the place down and no more Schwagstocks fine. But do not let them take his land. Let him sell it and get his money out of it. That is why you take a risk and make investments. His bank accounts have been frozen he cannot pay his staff, bills, property taxes and he has been charged with no crime. It is bullshit and everybody should fight like hell so that this does not keep happening to people. If the feds really need the money to fight the war on drugs so badly. They would Drug test everybody who is on or applying for government assistance. 25 year ago when I was in high school, we use to go to the doobie drive up (bus stop at the section 8 housing complex) anytime of the day and get weed, mdma, coke anything we wanted and from what I hear you still can today. I guess the feds are not able to take their own land so it will never stop. I also think that if they drug test all the people living in government housing. 1/2 the war on drugs would be won. Because then maybe work & food will be more important than drugs. The government could make so much money off that. Can you imagine? Not having to feed and house the people who are abusing the system. But giving it to the people that really need it. Wow! then I would think the war on drugs is worth it."

This long post about the DEA, Jimmy Tebeau and Camp Zoe on the RFT blog really nailed the DEA to the wall on Zoe. Here is a link to RFT article:http://blogs.riverfronttimes.com/atoz/2010/11/camp_zoe_site_of_schwagstock_f.php

This is really right on!

Jerry says:

"When you go to get a building permit in your county, will they issue it to you if there is something wrong? If Camp Zoe was the largest open drug air market in the Ozarks why did they continue to let it happen for 4 years??????? Collect sales tax from it? Put kids lives in danger? Does your tax dollars pay for Jimmy to train and protect us or law enforcement? From what this blogs says, these were big time drug dealers and the cops knowingly and willing let this happen for 4 years. Why did they want Jimmy to do their job? The lady who went to pull her daughter out of Camp Zoe was there what 1 hour and knew that there was drugs. How long did it take you to know drugs were being sold down there? Before you got your tent up? Have you been watching the news? Drug cartels will cut your head off if you try to stop them. Do you think Jimmy wanted to put his family at risk? Or his patrons? 4 YEARS why so long? The first drug purchase that an undercover agent made at Camp Zoe they should have made an arrest! The next permit Zoe wanted issued they should have said NO! We are sorry but we cannot issue you this permit. We have had undercover law enforcement in the crowd and something needs to be done to get a handle on the drug use! If someone smokes pot or serves a minor in a bar, they ticket the owners, if they think they were not trying to control it and give them a warning. 3 warnings and they take away their license. They do not seize the property. The State sends undercover, underage kids all the time into establishments even for cigarettes. They arrest the employee that served it on the spot and gives the place a fine. Why do people not understand and get it threw their thick head. Jimmy is NOT a Drug Enforcement Agent! Your tax dollars pays for the DEA to fight the war on drugs NOT Jimmy! If they need to shut the place down and no more Schwagstocks fine. But do not let them take his land. Let him sell it and get his money out of it. That is why you take a risk and make investments. His bank accounts have been frozen he cannot pay his staff, bills, property taxes and he has been charged with no crime. It is bullshit and everybody should fight like hell so that this does not keep happening to people. If the feds really need the money to fight the war on drugs so badly. They would Drug test everybody who is on or applying for government assistance. 25 year ago when I was in high school, we use to go to the doobie drive up (bus stop at the section 8 housing complex) anytime of the day and get weed, mdma, coke anything we wanted and from what I hear you still can today. I guess the feds are not able to take their own land so it will never stop. I also think that if they drug test all the people living in government housing. 1/2 the war on drugs would be won. Because then maybe work & food will be more important than drugs. The government could make so much money off that. Can you imagine? Not having to feed and house the people who are abusing the system. But giving it to the people that really need it. Wow! then I would think the war on drugs is worth it."

I'm sure my hometown has a lot of asset forfeitures but one sticks in mind: a fairly upscale brothel. It was located in a semi commercial area (restaurants bookstores coffeeshops for the most part) adjacent to an medium upscale neighborhood. Business owners, neighbors and police knew about it, but left it alone since there was never any problem.

Suddenly it was raided. Seems the wife of a cop learned that her husband was spending a lot of money ther. I mean a lot. One could only wonder what kind of super service this place was offering. Anyway, the wife kicked up a real fuss and the place was shut down. All of the madam's assets were confiscated on the principle that anything she owned or was in her bank account was made from illegal activities. Before she even went to trial everything had been divvied up amount the tax eaters and thugs. she'd lost her money, her building, her house, and everything she owned. I'm surprised they left her the clothes on her back. So what would have happened if she'd been acquitted (not unlikely, though)? Would her property be returned>? The official response in the venacular was "tough."

@Lemuel, here is a short summary of the under-reporting done in the underwear bomber case that makes good forwarding material. Best case, the gov't is so incompetent, they, not knowing he had explosives, helped the bomber get on the plane so they could track him in the states (that is what Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary for management at the State Department, implied). Worst case, the failed attempt was planned and allowed to fail in exactly the way it did for propaganda and/or other reasons (e.g.; financial).

Anonymous @7:10 PM,Thank you. That was a very useful article, better than the one I cited, with many links to other useful articles. So there were MANY eyewitnesses to the Underwear Bomber false-flag operation, not just thr Haskells, who said it stank like a dead fish.

Friends,Leviathan and its owners, the super-mega-rich and their mega-corporations, created an educational system 100 years ago in America, to turn out dumb, unthinking, unquestioning sheep as fodder for their factories and their armed forces, the latter so they could spread American economic domination over all the globe. Now, today, we have a dumbed-down, servile, uneducated, compliant mass of sheeple, that cares not even for its own welfare. DO NOT BLAME THEM. Those people who voted the Tea Partiers and Republicans into power, it is not their fault. THEY ARE NOT our enemy. It is the mega-rich and their bought politicians who are our enemy. Let us not fall for their divide-and-conquer strategy.

Their greed is infinite. Literally. Now that they have stolen almost everything in this country that isn't bolted to the floor, they are turning their attention to the rest of the world via endless wars. They want it ALL. The whole world. ALL of it.

This "asset forfeiture" is just ONE tiny symptom of their greed. Your unemployment (they don't need us robots any more because they have found cheaper robots in China,) your foreclosures (done with fraudulent signatures, and Congress and the courts seem to be unable to remedy that fraud,) the bailouts of the banks, the sale of assets to foreigners, from toll roads to toll bridges to buildings to (soon) National Parks, to which you will have to pay entrance fees to Shanghai Investment Corporation, ALL OF IT: Our country which our ancestors built with their blood and sweat, and every single thing we presently own and have labored for all our lives, are being brazenly stolen from us in broad daylight and sold out from under our feet.

Goldman Sachs paid $14 million in taxes in 2008 on NET profits of $2.3 BILLION. (A tax rate of 0.6%) Then got $10 billion in bailouts from the Treasury and the Fed. Warren Bufett said publicly he pays less taxes than his secretary. So who owns the Government of the United States? Not you and me, for sure.

How and when will it end? I don't know. I cannot see any light at the end of this tunnel. I see economic collapse, the deaths of billions from disease and starvation, wars, poverty, climate catastrophe, crop failures, desertification, the dire risk of accidental nuclear war.

"For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places; All these are the BEGINNING of sorrows.... And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another; And many false prophets shall arise, and deceive many.... For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not seen since the beginning of the world, no, nor ever shall be."

TJP posted the latest piece of FBI "theater" to spring onto the public. Yet another goof who was under observation by undercover agents while he was allowed to drive a vehicle laden with a "fake" bomb to his intended destination. I even heard as much from the lips of an FBI mouthpiece on the evening boob tube. Can anyone truly make this junk up?! Like old Traficant used to say, "Beam me up!".

The government-manufactured Portland incident to which TJP linked would, in a country populated by thinking adults with IQs in the triple-digit range, finally drive a stake through the heart of the notion that any "real" terrorist incidents of the non-state-sponsored variety have ever taken place in this country, or that they ever will. Unfortunately, Amerika's population of adults of the sort that I describe is too small to enable me to make that assertion seriously. Count on the next very obvious false-flag "terrorist" incident to send the sheepletards into sharting convulsions and demanding that the State finally revoke, permanently, what few pale excuses for freedom we still have left.

As for the asset forfeiture "laws" at the root of the travesty described here, count on them not having very much practical effect in the future. After all, once the State has finally robbed us of everything we own, there won't be any "assets" left to "forfeit."

On that note, has anyone spent any quality time in Argentina recently? I've heard good things about the place and might decide to make it my new home...

Stating he is “like many Americans, caught up in financial crisis and facing foreclosure on his home, Santa Fe County Sheriff Greg Solano on Wednesday owned up to stealing county property and selling items on eBay for personal profit.

Mr. Grigg, your article is an inspiration. I've never seen such an in-depth analysis from a local journalist. This entire situation is disgusting, pathetic, and a huge reminder about similar cases going down all over the country.

The blatant use of intimidation is the most obvious tip-off regarding the SWAT function here. It's a damn shame that violence is the only thing that speaks to law enforcement, and it's the one tactic that decent people will refuse.